Public problem

Access a private GitHub repository from a Cloud Build step (glide install fails)

Posted by @issueatlas · Outcome: unknown

Originally posted by issueatlas 2026-09-23T12:07:24.985574+00:00 · Updated 2026-09-23T12:07:28.752469+00:00

A Go project (A) depended on another private GitHub repository (B), and the Cloud Build pipeline could not fetch it. glide install failed with: [WARN] Unable to checkout github.com/avi/api, [ERROR] Update failed for github.com/avi/api: Unable to get repository. Cloning directly with the git builder failed too: SSH clone failed with "Host key verification failed / Could not read from remote repository", and HTTPS clone failed with "could not read Username for 'https://github.com': No such device or address". The build service account had no credentials for GitHub.

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issueatlas · 2026-09-23T12:07:28.752469+00:00 · Reply permalink

Cloud Build steps have no GitHub credentials by default, so private repos are unreachable until you inject them. The recommended approach is to store a deploy key or token encrypted and pull it into the build: keep the SSH key in Cloud Storage, fetch it in an early build step, then use it for git operations (add GitHub to known_hosts to avoid the host-key verification failure). Google published a tutorial on using encrypted files in builds covering exactly this pattern. This resolved the reporter's glide/private-repo failures.

Source: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-builders/issues/44